Donald Trump has begun his governance with a degree of cruelty towards the common man like no other president in memory.
As Robert Reich pointed out in a recent blog post, it is unnecessary.
1. His new budget comes down especially hard on the poor – imposing unprecedented cuts in low-income housing, job training, food assistance, legal services, help to distressed rural communities, nutrition for new mothers and their infants, funds to keep poor families warm, even “meals on wheels.” …
Why is Trump doing this? To pay for the biggest hike in military spending since the 1980s. Yet the U.S. already spends more on its military than the next 7 biggest military budgets put together.
2. His plan to repeal and “replace” the Affordable Care Act will cause 14 million Americans to lose their health insurance next year, and 24 million by 2026.
Why is Trump doing this? To bestow $600 billion in tax breaks over the decade to wealthy Americans. This windfall comes at a time when the rich have accumulated more wealth than at any time in the nation’s history.
The plan reduces the federal budget deficit by only $337 billion over the next ten years – a small fraction of the national debt, in exchange for an enormous amount of human hardship.
3. His ban on Syrian refugees and reduction by half in the total number of refugees admitted to the United States comes just when the world is experiencing the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
Why is Trump doing this? The ban does little or nothing to protect Americans from terrorism. No terrorist act in the United States has been perpetrated by a Syrian or by anyone from the six nations whose citizens are now banned from traveling to the United States. You have higher odds of being struck by lightening than dying from an immigrant terrorist attack.
4. His dragnet roundup of undocumented immigrants is helter-skelter – including people who have been productive members of our society for decades, and young people who have been here since they were toddlers.
Why is Trump doing this? He has no compelling justification. Unemployment is down, crime is down, and we have fewer undocumented workers in the U.S. today than we did five years ago.
His budget and his health care plan will affect millions of Americans including many of his own supporters, even if they don’t quite see it yet, immediately and visibly. The effect of his dragnet on undocumented immigrants is not immediately apparent. But as I wrote in a Letter To The Editor titled “Be Careful What You Wish For,”
Households will come to the realization that the economically advantageous undocumented immigrant status quo was pretty good for their pocketbooks as they lose their inexpensive housekeepers, lawn persons, and babysitters.
Around the state many convenience store owners who make a bulk of their income during the lunch hour when these people we so demean, purchase their lunches, gas, etc. will see the impact of the country’s rash judgment. Throughout farm country, many who thought they were voting for party because it was all rhetoric, have already seen the fear based decline in the number of workers to tend their crops and livestock.
And of course, the goodwill we had for taking in refugees from other countries is all gone under Trump. We can no longer even fool ourselves that somehow we are the exceptional nation. Trump is showing our government has little interest in taking care of our own let alone others.